There is increasing use of applications or “apps” in mobile devices, e.g. tablet computers, smart phones and personal digital assistant (PDA's), to control various building and home automation systems over local area and wide area networks. In addition, there are applications that run on these mobile devices which recognize human speech and perform some task on the device itself or at a central location. In order to improve the human-machine-interface in an automation system, a speech recognition application running on a mobile device, which converts speech into digital form and then to other communication protocols suitable for transport on a LAN/WAN, provides a reliable, hands-free, convenient method of use. The '424 application, incorporated herein by reference, discloses one such system.
While useful, speech recognition systems can exhibit limitations from a security point of view since speech, not “voice”, is being recognized. Speech recognition is much simpler to perform than individual voice recognition. The recognition process, however, does not necessarily provide a desired level of authentication. Speech recognition is not necessarily tied to an individual. Hence, it would be useful to authenticate the user or speaker in such systems.